Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-4hvwz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-02T22:21:00.278Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remembering the Future, Anticipating the Past: History, Time, and Cosmology among the Maya of Yucatan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Nancy M. Farriss
Nancy M. Farriss
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This essay is about concepts of time and the past among the Maya Indians of Yucatan in southeastern Mexico. It explores how these concepts fit into the Maya's general view of the way the world works and how they relate to certain dynamics of Maya history—as we define history—during their pre-Hispanic and colonial past. One inspiration has been the often baffling written records the Maya have left, from which we try to quarry historical facts without always enquiring what the records meant to the people who produced them. The other is the reminder, provided by recent historical work from anthropologists, that people do not record their past so much as construct it, with an eye to the present, and at the same time use that past in molding the present.

Type
Thinking about History
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , July 1987 , pp. 566 - 593
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Appadurai, Arjun. 1981. “The Past as a Scarce Resource.” Man, 16:2, 201–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ball, Joseph W. 1974. “A Coordinate Approach to Northern Maya Prehistory: A.D. 700–1200.” American Antiquity, 39:1, 85–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrera Vázquez, Alfredo. 1975. Códice de Calkini. Campeche: Talleres Gráficos del Estado.Google Scholar
Barrera Vázquez, Alfredo, and Rendón, Silvia. 1948. El libro de los libros de Chilam Balam. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.Google Scholar
Berger, Peter L. 1969. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Anchor Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, Marc. 1961. Feudal Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. 1913. Fascimile, ed., Anthropological Publications Vol. 5. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Brandon, Samuel G. F. 1965. History, Time, and Deity. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Brinton, Daniel G.. 1969. “The Chronicle of Chac-Xulub-Chen,” in The Maya Chronicles, Brinton, Daniel G., ed. (reprint of 1882 ed.), 189–259. New York: AMS Press.Google Scholar
Brotherston, Gordon. 1979. “Continuity in Maya Writing: New Readings of Two Passages in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel,” in Maya Archaeology and Ethnohistory, Hammond, Norman and Willey, Gordon R., eds., 241–58. Austin: University of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrasco, David. 1982. Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chamberlain, Robert S. 1948. The Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan, 1515–1550. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution.Google Scholar
Clanchy, M. T. 1979. From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Coe, Michael D. 1965. “A Model of Ancient Community Structure in the Maya Lowlands.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 21:2, 97–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coggins, Clemency C. 1975. “Painting and Drawing Styles at Tikal: An Historical and Iconographic Reconstruction.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University.Google Scholar
Cogolludo, Diego López de. 1688. Historia de Yucatan. Madrid: J. García Infanzón.Google Scholar
Cohn, Norman. 1970. The Pursuit of the Millennium, 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Craine, Eugene R., and Reindorp, Reginald C., 1979. The Codex Perez and the Book of Chilam Balam of Mani. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Edmonson, Munro, ed. 1982. The Ancient Future of the Itza: The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Eliade, Mircea. 1954. The Myth of the Eternal Return, or Cosmos and History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.Google Scholar
Farriss, Nancy M. 1982. “Sacrifice and Communion in Early Colonial Yucatan.” Paper presented at the 44th International Congress of Americanists, Manchester, England, 5–11 09.Google Scholar
Farriss, Nancy M. 1984. Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glass, John B. 1975. “A Survey of Native Middle American Pictorial Manuscripts,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Robert Wauchope, gen. ed., Vol. XIV, Pt. 3, pp. 3–80. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1968. Introduction to Literacy in Traditional Societies, Goody, J., ed., 1–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack. 1977. Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack, and Watt, Ian. 1968. “The Consequences of Literacy,” Literacy in Traditional Societies, Goody, J., ed. 27–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gough, Kathleen. 1968. “The Implications of Literacy in Traditional China and India,” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, Goody, J., ed., 69–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gruzinski, Serge. 1985. Les hommes-dieux du Mexique: Pouvoir indien et société coloniale, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Editions des Archives Contemporaines.Google Scholar
Howe, Leopold E. A. 1981. “The Social Determination of Knowledge: Maurice Bloch and Balinese Time.” Man, 16:2, 220–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Christopher. 1977. “Inauguration Dates of Three Late Classic Rulers of Tikal, Guatemala.” American Antiquity, 42:1, 28–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Christopher, and Satterthwaite, Linton. 1982. The Monuments and Inscriptions. Tikal Reports, No. 33. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Grant D. 1982. “Agriculture and Trade in the Colonial Period Southern Maya Lowlands,” in Maya Subsistence: Studies in Memory of Dennis E. Puleston, Flannery, Kent V., ed., 275–93. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Grant D. 1983. “The Last Maya Frontiers of Colonial Yucatan,” in Spaniards and Indians in Southeastern Mesoamerica, MacLeod, Murdo J. and Wasserstrom, Robert, eds., 64–91. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Kelley, David H. 1976. Deciphering the Maya Script. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. “The Internal African Frontier: The Making of African Political Culture,” in The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies, Kopytoff, Igor, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Landa, Diego de. 1941. Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatan, Tozzer, Alfred M., ed. and trans. Cambridge: Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Leach, Edmund R. 1954. “Primitive Time Reckoning,” in A History of Technology, Singer, Charles, Holmyard, E. J., and Hall, A. R., eds. 1, 110–27. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Leach, Edmund R.. 1961. “Two Essays concerning the Symbolic Representation of Time,” in his Rethinking Anthropology, 124–36. London: The Athlone Press.Google Scholar
León-Portilla, Miguel. 1968. Tiempo y realidad en el pensamiento maya. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico.Google Scholar
López Austin, Alfredo. 1973. Hombre-dios: Religión y politico en el mundo náhuatl. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico.Google Scholar
López Austin, Alfredo. 1980. Cuerpo humano e ideología: Las concepciones de los antiguos nahuas. 2 vols. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico.Google Scholar
Marcus, Joyce. 1976. Emblem and State in the Classic Maya Lowlands: An Epigraphic Approach to Territorial Organization. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.Google Scholar
Martínez Hernández, Juan, ed. 1926. Crónica de Yaxkukul. Merida: Talleres de la Companía Tipográfica Yucateca.Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur G. 1977. “Captains of the Itzá: Unpublished Mural Evidence from Chichén Itzá,” in Social Process in Maya Prehistory, Hammond, Norman, ed., 197–225. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur G. 1979. “The Little Descent: Manifest Destiny from the East,” in Actes du XLIIe Congrès des Américanistes. Paris, 1976, VIII, 221–36. Paris: Sociétè des Américanistes.Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur G. 1983a. “The Communication of Power among the Lowland Maya: Images and Texts. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, 16–20 11.Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur G. 1983b. “Image and Text in Pre-Hispanic Art: Apples and Oranges,” in Text and Image in Pre-Columbian Art: Essays on the Interpretation of the Visual and Verbal Arts, Berlo, Janet C., ed., 4–54. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur G. 1986. Maya Rulers of Time: A Study of Architectural Sculpture at Tikal, Guatemala. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Mooney, James. 1965. The Ghost Dance Religion, 2d ed., Wallace, Anthony F. C., ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morley, Sylvanus G. 1915. An Introduction to the Study of Maya Hieroglyphics. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnography, Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Morley, Sylvanus, and Sharer, Robert W. 1983. The Ancient Maya. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Walter. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pagden, Anthony. 1982. The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Peel, J. D. Y. 1984. “Making History: The Past in the Ijesha Present.” Man, 19:1, 111–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phelan, John L. 1970. The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World, 2d ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Proskouriakoff, Tatiana. 1960. “Historical Implications of a Pattern of Dates at Piedras Negras, Guatemala.” American Antiquity, 25:4, 454–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Proskouriakoff, Tatiana.1963–1964. “Historical Data in the Inscriptions of Yaxchilan,” Pts. I and II. Estudios de Cultura Maya, 3:149–67; 4:177–201.Google Scholar
Puleston, Dennis E. 1979. “An Epistemological Pathology and the Collapse, or Why the Maya Kept the Short Count,” in Maya Archaeology and Ethnohistory, Hammond, Norman and Willey, Gordon R., eds., 63–71. Austin: University of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Relaciones de Yucatan” (Pts. I and II). 1898–1900. Vols. XI and XIII (n.s.) of Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones de Ultramar, Madrid: Real Academic de la Historia.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. 1982. Finitud y culpabilidad (trans, of Philosophie de la volonté: Finitude et culpabilité). Madrid: Taurus.Google Scholar
Rosaldo, Renato. 1980. Ilongot Headhunting, 1883–1974: A Study in Society and History. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roys, Ralph. 1960. “The Maya Katun Prophecies of the Books of Chilam Balam. Series I.” Contributions to American Anthropology and History, XII, 1–60. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution.Google Scholar
Roys, Ralph, ed. The Book of Chilam Balam ofChumayel, 2d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press and Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Salomon, Frank. 1982. “Chronicles of the Impossible: Notes on Three Peruvian Indigenous Historians,” in From Oral to Written Expression: Native Andean Chronicles of the Colonial Period, Adorno, Rolena, ed., 9–39. Syracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.Google Scholar
Sánchez de Aguilar, Pedro. 1937 [c.a. 1613]. Informe contra idolorum cultores del obispado de Yucatan, 3d ed. Merida: Imprenta Triay e Hijos.Google Scholar
Satterthwaite, Linton. 1965. “Calendrics of the Maya Lowlands,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Wauchope, Robert, gen. ed., Vol. III, Pt. 2, 603–31. Austin: University of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schele, Linda. 1976. “Accession Iconography of Chan-Bahlum in the Group of the Cross at Palenque,” in The Art, Iconography, and Dynastic History of Palenque, Robertson, Merle G., ed., 9–34. Pebble Beach, Calif.: Robert Louis Stevenson School.Google Scholar
Scholes, France V., and Roys, Ralph L. 1968. The Maya Chontal Indians of Acalan-Tixchel: A Contribution to the History and Ethnography of the Yucatan Peninsula, 2d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Sierra O’Reilly, Justo. 1954–1957. [1848–51]. Los indios de Yucatan, Menendez, Carlos R., ed. 2 vols. Merida: Compañía Tipografica Yucateca.Google Scholar
Stirrat, R. L. 1984. “Sacred Models.” Man, 19:2, 199–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Keith. 1971. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Thompson, J. Eric S. 1960. Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction, 2d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, Philip C. 1978. “Tekanto in the Eighteenth Century.” Ph.D. diss., Tulane University.Google Scholar